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[joethelawyer]

Originally Posted by Carnivorous_Bean

It seems to me that without being good, bad, or whatever, WotC chooses its actions as a company, and that therefore, every major decision is made with one goal in mind: to make more money.

Scott Rouse may be a champion for the 'gamer community' -- or he may be the 'good cop' who is the friendly, understanding, approachable person who makes the gamers feel better about the company. Regardless, he's got to pay his bills, also -- he needs his salary -- so he's not going to be standing there, pawing the ground in steely-eyed defiance, cowing the management into doing what's 'best for the gaming community.' The utmost he's going to do is find a way to persuade them that they'll make more money with a more open GSL.

So, that suggests a few quite logical scenarios to explain why making the GSL more open would give WotC greater profits:

1. 4e is successful, but an analysis of 3e's profits revealed that 3rd party support will make the success spike even higher, and bring in even more money than they're already making.

2. 4e isn't too successful, and they think -- again based on concrete data -- that an open GSL will boost sales and 'revive' their profits.

3. They're afraid of negative reaction causing a 'profit speedbump' in the future, based on a huge amount of complaining e-mails from customers. So they're stamping out the problem while it's still tiny.

4. Anything else that makes an open GSL beneficial to the bottom line of WotC.

totally agreed. no one in business does this sort of thing from the goodness of their hearts. there is a profit motive involved. accountability is the bottom line. in fact, if a company did something that was not in its financial best interests, it could be sued by its shareholders.

also, keep in mind the pinto cases from the 70's. ford knew that if a pinto was hit in just the right way they would blow up and likely kill or seriously injure the people inside. they put it out anyhow, because they thought that the cost of the suits would be less than the costs of fixing all the cars. decisions are made like that every day.